Making Disciples – The Battle for Holiness
My recent devotions have drawn me to Romans 7. That latter half of the chapter describes a battle that I cannot win. Yet it is not without hope. It also describes this battle as one Jesus cannot lose.
The passage brings us to face the weakness of the flesh and our bondage to sin. The struggle is well known among us,
For what I am doing, I do not understand; for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate. But if I do the very thing I do not want to do, I agree with the Law, confessing that the Law is good. So now, no longer am I the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good is not. For the good that I want, I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want. But if I am doing the very thing I do not want, I am no longer the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me. Romans 7:15–20 (NASB95)
The apostle is well aware of how absolute our fall is. Therefore, we cannot win in the battle with sin. Making disciples and becoming disciples requires a serious realization that holiness cannot be the achievement of a fallen soul.
Reading Romans 7 led me to read the novella, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Dr. Jekyll attempted by scientific means to divide himself between the two sides of his nature, moral and evil. Mr. Hyde was the result, a man of pure evil without any constraints by good. When not Mr. Hyde, the doctor was, however, still the same old, conflicted Henry Jekyll. What he was unable to do was separate from his nature someone who was fully good.
It is not a theological book, but the author uncovers a biblical truth. Each of us is fully fallen. He writes of Henry Jekyll’s first perception of Mr. Hyde, “I knew myself, at first breath of this new life, to be more wicked, tenfold more wicked, sold as a slave to my original evil.”
This was a battle Dr. Jekyll could not win. For all of his studied efforts, for all his applications of chemical techniques, he was a sinner. So too am I. My techniques are equally fruitless.
However, there is one who enters this conflict as a champion. This battle is one he cannot lose. With the Apostle Paul, one may cry, “Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death?” Immediately he names the champion, “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
The disciplines of our discipleship are not a human invention to turn a Dr. Jekyll into something better than Mr. Hyde. These are not techniques for self-improvement. The disciplines of our discipleship are the means by which one’s soul and one’s life are opened to the grace that transforms us.
Romans 6 speaks of a sanctification, a holiness, that we derive from being freed from sin and enslaved to God, the outcome of which is eternal life. (v. 19, v. 22, v. 23)
Holiness is the goal of our mission. Scriptural holiness is the use of the means of grace in order fully to appropriate the atonement of Jesus’ cross and resurrection to our lives. Being fully fallen, none of us can by our techniques enter this victory. None of us, by our techniques, deliver ourselves from evil. Opening ourselves to grace and trusting in Jesus Christ alone, the reversal of the fall may be ours. Sinners become righteous and empowered to live as we ought.
As I wrote, that is “a battle that I cannot win.” However, this a “battle Jesus cannot lose.”
Rev. David Banks
Conference Superintendent